BY MARCH 10, we shall know whether Cillian Murphy has become the first Irishman to win the Academy Award for Best Actor since Daniel Day-Lewis in 2012.
Whether or not Murphy succeeds, however, is immaterial. One Irish actor has already achieved the nation’s collective dream this week. We are speaking, of course, about Barry Keoghan, who this week appeared naked in the pre-Oscar’s edition of Vanity Fair.
The appearance by Keoghan is a reference to his nudity in the much-discussed film Saltburn. Keoghan’s nude scene has been so much discussed, in fact, that even Andrew Scott is getting harassed by BBC reporters with insulting questions about Keoghan’s penis.
Despite the inescapable nightmare that is British entertainment reporters during an awards season that prominently features Irish filmmakers, Keoghan’s success is something to be welcomed. Ireland is not often so roundly lauded in the field of nudity.
The one concern is that young Irish men have, in the past, proven themselves especially suggestible when they get a whiff of an icon whose style they can appropriate. The advent of Conor McGregor was ushered in by men with beards, three-piece suits and watches that would send the median Irish earner into overdraft. Similarly, Cillian Murphy’s hairstyle and flat-cap in his role as Tommy Shelby has been aped at home and abroad (though the success of Oppenheimer has failed to revive the porkpie hat in the same vein).
With summer fast approaching, it doesn’t bear thinking about how a population already too eager to take its shirt off will respond to this encouragement to get even more naked.
Coincidentally, a certain cultural confusion towards nudity was already hanging in the air. Last weekend, a Belfast late-bar called The Devenish hosted an evening with a group of dancers called the UK Pleasure Boys.
It’s actually harder to find a Google Image result of the young pleasure men with their shirts on than off, but it still seems that some were surprised when the evening culminated with the UK Pleasure Boys getting naked. Smartphone footage of the incident quickly went viral, horrifying some and amusing others, sparking a brief moral panic that would have felt a bit more timely in the early-2000s.
Presenting the 30th annual #VFHollywood Issue, our cheekiest yet, starring Bradley Cooper, Natalie Portman, Pedro Pascal, Colman Domingo, Jodie Comer, Lily Gladstone, Greta Lee, Charles Melton, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Jenna Ortega, and Barry Keoghan.
— VANITY FAIR (@VanityFair) February 21, 2024
🔗: https://t.co/q98NkynQzU… pic.twitter.com/S5ID11nPag
Video footage appears to show some of the audience members joining the Pleasure Boys on the stage and “simulating sex acts”, which is how you’re supposed to refer to these things when you’re a journalist. There is some unwritten rule that prevents us from specifically referring to the helicoptering of a penis.
The Pleasure Boys have announced that they will ban phones at their shows in response to the breach, which does seem like the kind of thing that should have occurred to them sooner. In their defence, if you’re spending that much time working on your body, something else is going to fall through the cracks.
Some of Northern Ireland’s more puritanical citizens have complained that the dancing was inappropriate, in a way perhaps reminiscent of the scenes on Liveline when Paul Mescal got his dick out on Normal People. This little island is already more unified than we know.
Anyway, Belfast City Council confirmed that it is now investigating the event. At the risk of downplaying the seriousness of the matter, I’m going to go out on a limb and say what happened is that a group of strippers named the Pleasure Boys who are paid money to strip probably took their clothes off. Mystery solved.
As we continue to skirt around conversations of border polls and a united Ireland, it’s almost comforting to know that all the peoples of Ireland are similarly scandalised by the presence of hot sweaty men who only came here to entertain us. Still, it seems as though we should be cutting the Pleasure Boys and their supporters plenty of slack.
To paraphrase the great poet and performer Emmet Kirwan: it wasn’t blokes in the nip who ruined this country, it was blokes in suits. This is worth bearing in mind during another week when official Ireland – namely RTÉ and the FAI – appeared before Oireachtas committee hearings yet again.
It is notable that public frustration with these organisations persists, despite everyone involved being fully clothed. This is not to suggest by any means that Kevin Bakhurst’s role as Director General would be made easier if he were to embark on some kind of Full Monty-esque journey of self-discovery, but it certainly would make for a compelling next act of the seemingly interminable RTÉ scandal.
Siún Ní Raghallaigh became the latest major RTÉ figure to resign. Ní Raghallaigh had served as chairperson of the board after Media Minister Catherine Martin declined to express confidence in her on Prime Time. Ní Raghallaigh responded promptly by issuing her resignation from the national broadcaster at 1am on Friday morning – the time for making all major life choices.
The cascading roll of heads could be set to continue, with the Labour Party saying that Martin’s handling of the RTÉ scandal has made her position untenable.
In fact, the RTÉ board has scheduled yet another meeting just as I prepare to file this edition of Surrealing in the Years. Are they all about to resign? Catherine Martin is going to be on the Six One News. Will this ever end? All of this drama and they still won’t bring back Quizone.
RTÉ had to share public scrutiny with the FAI this week, who appeared before the Public Accounts Committee. During proceedings, the FAI raised eyebrows by submitting to the PAC the most redacted email in the history of black highlighters. It even went so far as to block out the FAI’s social media handles.
An actual email supplied to the PAC by the FAI. pic.twitter.com/BcG6YJkJS7
— Orla McElroy (@mcelroyorla) February 22, 2024
The action was supposedly taken in order to (understandably) protect the identity of a junior staffer at the FAI, but the ridiculous image of an entirely email blacked out was widely shared, and subsequently mocked, online. Still, it was a step up from the time John Delaney appeared only to avoid questions on his solicitor’s advice.
Chairperson of the Public Accounts Committee Brian Stanley said: “To hand in an email with simply a logo on a page… It’s an insult to the public and it’s not good behaviour from an organisation that’s going to put its hand out for €517m.”
In other words, there is still too much being covered up. RTÉ and the FAI could do with a few lessons from Barry Keoghan and the Pleasure Boys.
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